Have you ever had a period of time go by in your life and you're just like, okay, so when the hell do I get a break from the chaos? Like genuinely, when does the plot calm down?
When do I get the little peaceful montage where I'm drinking coffee in the sunlight, my hair is cooperating, my bills are paid, everyone I love is emotionally stable, my inbox is empty, and absolutely nothing is on fire.
Because sometimes life feels like it has taken personal offense to your desire for peace. Crazy and overwhelming things keep happening over and over and over and over. You quite literally cannot catch a break.
It kind of feels like the dementors from Harry Potter came to suck all of the happiness from your soul. And at some point, you stop asking, how do I deal with this? And you start asking, when does this stop?
That question is important because there is a massive difference between trying to survive something difficult and trying to survive while desperately waiting for your life to become easy enough that you no longer have to survive it.
And today, I want to tell you a story about a very silly monk. Yes, a silly monk. And somehow, this silly monk taught me one of the most important things I've ever learned about peace.
There is a story that I absolutely love. There's this restless man who goes to a wise monk because he wants to know how to find peace. And the monk takes him to a rushing river.
The river is moving quickly. It's loud, it's unpredictable, it's difficult to cross. And the monk calmly tells the man, We'll wait here until the river dries up.
Then we can cross safely. And the man is confused, reasonably so because what the hell? Sir, you are a monk.
You are supposed to be wise. Have you never seen a river before? Rivers don't just wake up one morning and go, Hey guys, I've decided to evaporate.
Good luck. No, the river keeps moving. So the man waits and waits and waits.
And eventually he realizes something. If he waits for the river to completely disappear before crossing it, he may be waiting forever. The point isn't that the river needs to dry up.
The point is that he needs to learn how to cross it while it's still flowing. And when I first heard this story, I remember being like, okay, so this monk is clearly an idiot, because I thought the lesson was obvious.
Obviously, you don't wait for a river to dry up. But then I realized I had been doing exactly that for years.
I had been standing on the bank of my own river, staring at everything happening in front of me, waiting for life to finally become calm enough for me to participate in it. I thought once this happens, then I'll be okay.
Once I'm less anxious, once school is better, once my circumstances change, once I feel safe, once I'm caught up, once my brain stops doing this, once I have enough money, once I know what I'm doing, once I have my shit together, once the bad thing is over, then I'll live, then I'll relax, then I'll breathe, then I'll be happy. And the problem with that mindset is that life doesn't promise you a dry river. There will always be another current. There will always be something you didn't plan for.
There will always be an email you didn't want, a bill you forgot about, a relationship that gets complicated, a body that does something weird, a plan that falls apart, a rejection, a loss, a deadline, a mistake, a Tuesday.
Honestly, sometimes Tuesday is enough. And I wish I had the power to take all of that away. I truly do.
I wish I could just grab the river and go, okay, everyone, I've had enough. We're shutting this shit down. But unfortunately, I am not a waterbender, so I can't move the river.
But I can learn how to cross it. And I think that is where peace actually starts. Not when the river disappears, when you become better at navigating it.
I think we sometimes confuse peace with having no problems. We imagine peaceful people as people who have nothing going wrong. Their relationships are perfect.
Their finances are perfect. Their mental health is perfect. Their schedules are perfect.
Their homes are clean. Their skin is clear. Their plans are alive.
Their phone battery is somehow always above 40 percent. They wake up at 5 a.m. and drink lemon water.
And I'm sorry, but I don't trust those people. Because peace isn't the same thing as a problem-free life. Peace is being able to experience a problem without believing that the problem has completely taken control of you.
There is actually psychological science behind this. Believe it or not, one of the concepts psychologists talk about is perceived control. And perceived control is essentially your belief about how much influence you have over what happens to you.
Notice that I said perceived control, because sometimes you don't actually have much control over the situation. But believing you have some ability to respond can change the way you experience stress.
Think about being in the passenger seat of a car. If the driver is speeding down the highway, you may feel anxious. But now imagine the same situation and suddenly realizing, oh, I have no idea who this person is.
Different experience, right? You might become terrified, because now the problem isn't just, this car is moving really fast.
It's, I have no idea what is happening, and I have no ability to influence what happens next, because I don't know this person. That feeling of helplessness is incredibly uncomfortable for the human brain.
And this is one reason chaos can feel psychologically exhausting. It's not only the event itself, it's the feeling of, I don't know what is happening, I don't know what's coming next, and I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do about it.
That is a brutal combination. And when you're in that state long enough, you can start thinking that the only way you'll ever feel okay again, is if the entire situation changes. But what if there's another option?
What if instead of trying to control the entire river, you learn where to put your feet? I will be completely honest, I spent forever waiting for the river to dry up. And I'm not talking about a few hours, I'm talking about years.
Years of my life that I spent thinking, okay, eventually things will calm down. And when they didn't calm down, I thought there was something wrong with me.
Because surely if I was doing everything right, life would eventually become manageable, right? Or wrong. Sometimes you can do everything you possibly can and still be standing in a river.
And that doesn't mean you're feeling, it means you're human. There were periods of my life where I felt completely out of control. I was heavily medicated, I was literally being sedated every night.
My grades were horrible. And when I say horrible, I mean, I was lucky if I got a D- in some of my classes.
And the really painful part was that I wanted to do well. I wanted to be a good student, I wanted to be responsible, I wanted to be productive. I wanted to be someone who could sit down, study, turn things and show up and just function.
But my brain and body were not cooperating. I was so anxious that eating and drinking could become incredibly difficult. Sometimes I couldn't even keep things down.
I got to the point where I was relying on things like ensure instead of being able to eat normal meals. And I remember thinking, why me? Why is my river like this?
Why is the current so damn strong? Why does everyone else seem to be walking around in the shallow end while I feel like I'm getting dragged underwater, essentially? Why do I have to work this hard just to do things that seem easy for everybody else?
Why am I trying so hard and still drowning? And I want to talk about the why me thought for a second, because I used to think that why me was just self-pity. And sometimes, yeah, it can turn into self-pity.
But psychologically, I think there is something deeper happening. When something painful happens repeatedly, your brain wants an explanation. The human brain is an incredible pattern detection machine.
It is constantly asking, what caused this? How can I prevent it? What does this mean?
What happens next? That is useful. If you touch a hot stove and burn your hand, your brain goes, great, fantastic.
We have learned something. Do not do that again. But when life becomes chaotic enough, the brain can start trying to find explanations for things that don't have satisfying explanations.
And suddenly you're lying in bed at 2 a.m. going, was it because of this? Was it because I'm not good enough?
Was it because I'm a bad person? Was it because I made that decision? What if I had done this differently?
Why does this keep happening? And now you're not just experiencing a river, you're sitting on the bank conducting a full forensic investigation of the river.
You have charts, you have theories, you've interviewed witnesses, you have a corkboard with red string. And meanwhile, the river is still moving. Rumination is not the same thing as problem solving.
This is something I wish someone had explained to me earlier. Thinking about a problem does not automatically mean you're solving it. There is a difference between problem solving and rumination.
Problem solving asks, what can I do? Rumination asks, why is this happening to me? Problem solving tends to move toward an action.
Rumination tends to move in circles. Problem solving says, okay, this sucks. What is the next step?
Rumination says, but why? Okay, but why? Okay, but why did it have to happen like that?
But why me? And what if, and suddenly, you spent three hours emotionally interrogating yourself and have accomplished absolutely nothing. And I've done this a lot because rumination can feel productive.
You're thinking, you're analyzing, you're examining, you're trying to understand. But sometimes, you're not actually moving forward. You're just walking around the same room in your brain.
And there is a reason the brain gets stuck there. Your nervous system is trying to create certainty. It thinks, if I can just understand this enough, maybe I can prevent it from happening again.
The problem is that life doesn't give us that guarantee. You can understand something deeply and still not be able to control whether it happens again. And that is one of the hardest truths about being alive.
Understanding is not always control. This reminds me of another analogy. Imagine you're trying to make a left turn onto a really busy road.
You sit there, cards keep flying past, you're waiting, waiting, waiting some more, and you're getting increasingly frustrated because you're thinking, I need to go left, but there's no safe opening. So what do you do?
Sometimes you make a few right turns instead. You take a different route. Maybe it's longer, maybe it's annoying, maybe Google Maps keeps saying, recalculating, and you're like, yes, I know, I'm aware.
But eventually you get to where you were trying to go. And the fact that you didn't make the left turn doesn't mean you failed. It means you adapted.
That is psychological flexibility. And psychological flexibility is one of those concepts that I think deserves way more attention, because we tend to think strength means being able to stick to their original plan no matter what.
But sometimes strength is realizing, this isn't working anymore. I need another route. You can have a goal without being married to the exact path you originally imagined.
Maybe you wanted to graduate at a certain time. Maybe you wanted a certain career by a certain age. Maybe you thought you'd be married by now.
Maybe you thought you'd have a certain amount of money. Maybe you thought your family would look different. Maybe you thought you'd be healthier.
Maybe you thought a relationship would work. Maybe you thought you would be a completely different person by now. And now you're sitting there looking at your life thinking, this isn't what I planned.
Okay, that's allowed. You are allowed to create the original route. But you don't have to decide that because you missed one turn, the entire destination is gone.
Sometimes the road changes, sometimes you change, sometimes the destination changes, and sometimes the most peaceful thing you can do is stop fighting the GPS.
Your brain doesn't need certainty as much as it needs safety. Another thing I've learned is that when you're overwhelmed, you can become obsessed with certainty. You know exactly what's going to happen.
You want guarantee. You want someone to tell you, this will be the last bad thing. This relationship will work.
You won't lose this. Nothing else will go wrong. You're going to be okay.
And I wish we could give people those guarantees. I really do, but we can't. What we can build is something different.
We can build the belief, whatever happens, I will figure out my next step. That is a completely different kind of safety. It's not nothing bad will happen.
It's I trust myself to respond when something does. And that is huge. Because think about how different those two beliefs feel.
I need everything to go right versus even if something goes wrong, I can respond. The first one makes your piece depend on the environment. The second one gives some of that piece back to you.
That's the shift. Stop thinking, how do I make the river disappear? Start asking, where can I step?
When the river is raging, you don't need to figure out how to stop the entire river. You need to find the next foothold. That's it.
Not the next 10 years, not the entire solution, not the perfect life, the next foothold. What can I do today? What is within my control?
What needs to happen first? Who can I ask for help? What can wait?
What can I let go of? What is actually an emergency? What am I making an emergency because my nervous system feels like everything is an emergency?
The last one is important, because when you're overwhelmed, everything can feel equally urgent. Your brain basically starts putting every notification on maximum volume. Laundry?
Emergency. Email? Emergency.
Assignment? Emergency. Relationship problem?
Emergency. Someone didn't text back? Emergency.
You forgot to buy toothpaste? Society is collapsing. But not everything deserves the same amount of energy.
One of the most peaceful things you can learn is how to differentiate this is uncomfortable from this is dangerous. Because those are not the same thing. And sometimes the body doesn't know how to tell the difference immediately.
Your nervous system can react very intensely to uncertainty, conflict, rejection, embarrassment, or overwhelm. Your heart races, your stomach drops, your muscles tense, your thoughts speed up, your brain screams, do something!
And sometimes, the best thing you can do is pause. Not because you don't care, but because you don't want your most panicked state making all of your decisions. You don't have to be calm to be peaceful.
This one is important, because I think peace gets romanticized. People imagine peace as, I'm sitting by the ocean, breathing deeply, and absolutely nothing is bothering me. And that's lovely.
But real peace can look like, I am freaking the hell out, but I know what my next step is. Peace can look like crying while sending the email. Peace can look like being terrified and still making the appointment.
Peace can look like saying, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm going to figure out one thing. Peace can look like taking a shower when your brain feels like garbage. Peace can look like eating something.
Peace can look like going to bed instead of dooms growing until 4 a.m. Peace can look like telling someone, I actually need help. Peace can look like leaving.
Peace can look like staying. Peace can look like changing your plan. Peace can look like admitting, I can also solve this tonight.
The last one saved me more times than I can count. Because sometimes your brain wants to solve your entire life at midnight. And I'm sorry, but midnight, you does not have clearance to redesign your entire existence.
Go to bed. We can reconvene tomorrow. You cannot think your way into a life with zero uncertainty.
This is another uncomfortable truth. You can become incredibly self-aware. You can read every psychology book.
You can journal. You can meditate. You can analyze your childhood.
You can understand attachment theory. You can learn about trauma. You can know every coping mechanism.
And you will still sometimes be confused. You will still make mistakes. You will still get hurt.
You will still have days where you're like, what the hell am I doing? That's not evidence that your growth isn't working. That's evidence that you're alive and human.
Mental health isn't becoming a person who never gets overwhelmed. It's developing more ways to respond when you do get overwhelmed. It's like building a bigger toolbox.
Maybe before you had one tool, panic. And now you have, okay, let's breathe. Let's take a break.
Let's call somebody. Let's write this down. Let's wait before responding.
Let's go for a walk. Let's eat. Let's sleep.
Let's ask for clarification. Let's make a plan. Let's accept that this is outside of my control.
And maybe eventually, you have 50 tools. The river hasn't changed. You have.
There is also grief in accepting the river, and I don't want to make this sound like, just accept life sucks sometimes. Yay! Because acceptance is not the same thing as liking something.
You can accept reality and still hate it. You can say, this happened, and still say, I wish it hadn't. You can accept, this relationship is over, and still cry.
You can accept my life doesn't look how I thought it would, and still grieve. You can accept I can't control this person, and still wish they would behave differently. Acceptance isn't saying, this is good.
It's saying, this is real. And there is a tremendous amount of power and being willing to look at reality without negotiating with it. Because when you're constantly arguing with reality, you're fighting two battles.
There's the actual problem, and then there's, this should not be happening. And sometimes the second battle drains you more than the first. This shouldn't be happening, can become another river.
I've noticed this in myself. Something happens, and immediately my brain goes, this shouldn't be happening. Okay, but it is, this isn't fair.
Maybe it isn't. This isn't my plan. Probably not.
I shouldn't have to do with this. I agree, but you're dealing with it. And I think sometimes we believe that if we can prove enough that something isn't fair, reality will give us a refund.
Unfortunately, reality has a terrible customer service department. There's no manager. There's no escalation button.
You can scream, I would like to speak to whoever is in charge. And the universe is like, best I can do is another Tuesday. So eventually we have to ask, given that this is where I am, what do I want to do next?
Not because what happened was okay, not because you deserved it, not because it was fair, but because your life is still yours. Your circumstances are part of your story, not the entire story.
I think one of the most dangerous things we can do when life gets hard is we start identifying ourselves with the chaos. Instead of, I'm going through a really difficult period, we start saying, my life is a disaster.
Instead of, I'm struggling in school right now. We say, I am stupid. Instead of, I'm overwhelmed.
We say, I can't handle anything. Instead of, I made a bad decision. We say, I ruin everything.
Do you see what happens? The event becomes an identity, and that's a much heavier thing to carry. Psychologically, this is part of why the language we use with ourself matters.
Your brain doesn't just hear yourself talk as decorative narration. Repeated thoughts can become familiar mental pathways. The more you repeatedly describe yourself in a certain way, the easier that description can become to access.
So instead of, I'm failing. Try, I'm struggling right now. Instead of, I can't do this.
Try, I don't know how to do this yet. Instead of, my life is falling apart. Try, a lot is happening at once.
That doesn't magically fix the situation, but it changes the psychological frame. And frames matter, because if you tell yourself, I'm drowning, your brain may start searching for evidence that there's no way out.
But if you tell yourself, I am in deep water, now there's room for another question. Okay, where's the shore? You don't have to cross the whole river today.
This might be my favorite part of the entire analogy. You don't have to cross the entire river in one movement. You don't have to leap from one side to the other, like some kind of Olympic river crossing champion.
Sometimes you just need one rock, then another, then another, and that's what progress can look like.
One email, one meal, one assignment, one conversation, one boundary, one appointment, one application, one workout, one shower, one night of sleep, one honest conversation with yourself, one decision, one tiny fucking step.
And I know that sounds cliche, but when your life feels enormous, you have to make your definition of progress smaller, because otherwise you'll keep looking at the entire river and deciding there's no way I can do this.
Of course, you can't do the whole thing at once. Nobody can. You don't eat in an elephant one bite.
Actually, I don't recommend eating elephants at all. But you get the point. You take the next bite.
Sometimes the current is genuinely too strong, and this is where I want to be really careful. Because there are circumstances where the answer is not just be more resilient. Sometimes a river really is dangerous.
Sometimes you need help. Sometimes you need a therapist. Sometimes you need a doctor.
Sometimes you need a friend. Sometimes you need financial assistance. Sometimes you need to leave a situation.
Sometimes you need medication. Sometimes you need accommodations. Sometimes you need to call somebody and say, I cannot do this by myself right now.
And that is not weakness. If you're standing in a raging river, asking for a rope is not a character flaw. It's survival.
We have this weird cultural obsession with independence, like needing help means you aren't strong. But humans are social creatures. Our brains and nervous systems develop in groups.
Connection matters. Support matters. Co-regulation matters.
Sometimes another person helps your nervous system come down simply because you don't have to care the entire experience alone. So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, but my river is actually huge. I believe you.
You don't have to prove your strength by drowning quietly. You are allowed to build a bridge, and sometimes crossing the river doesn't mean becoming an incredible swimmer.
Maybe you build a bridge, maybe you take a boat, maybe somebody throws you a rope, maybe you walk 10 miles upstream and find a shallow crossing. Maybe you decide, actually, I don't need to cross this river at all.
That is another thing I love about this analogy. There's no single correct way to navigate life. Your route does not have to look like somebody else's.
Someone else's bridge might be your boat. Someone else's boat might make you seasick. Someone else might be able to swim across something that you can't.
That doesn't make you less capable. It means you're a different person with a different body, history, brain, environment, and set of circumstances. Comparison can make us forget that.
We look at someone else and think, why can they handle this so easily? You don't know what that river looks like, and they don't know yours.
So what do we actually do when life won't stop happening? Let's make this practical, because I don't want this episode to be one giant metaphor where we all sit around nodding and then immediately return to our regularly scheduled existential crisis.
If your life feels chaotic right now, start here. With one, we've got to separate the river from the next step. Ask, what is actually happening?
Then, what is the next thing I can do? Not the next 20 things, the next one. Talking to myself with that one.
If you need to make a phone call, make the phone call. If you need to submit something, submit it. If you need help, ask.
If you need rest, rest. Don't solve tomorrow before you finish today. With two, we have identify what is actually in your control.
You cannot control other people's behavior, other people's opinions, the past, whether someone chooses you, whether an unexpected problem happens, whether somebody misunderstands you, whether the weather ruins your plans, whether life occasionally decides to throw a chair through your window. But you can control your next action, your boundaries, your communication, where you put your attention, whether you ask for help, whether you take care of your body, whether you keep trying, whether you change direction, whether you continue feeding a thought that is hurting you. And sometimes the most peaceful sentence in the world is, that's not mine to control. With three, we have stop requiring yourself to feel ready. This one is huge.
You don't always get to feel confident before you act. Sometimes confidence becomes after action. You don't have to feel brave enough to cross the river.
You can be scared. You can shake. You can cry.
You can say, I really don't want to do this. And then do the next thing anyway. Courage isn't the absence of fear.
It's behavior in the presence of fear. With four, we have give your brain somewhere to put the chaos. Write it down, make a list, journal, talk to someone, create a plan.
Your brain is much worse at holding 17 abstract problems than it is at looking at 17 things written on paper. Sometimes getting the chaos out of your head and onto something physical is enough to make the river look slightly less enormous.
With five, we have stop making your worst day your identity. You can have a terrible day without being a terrible person. You can fail a class without being stupid.
You can have an anxiety attack without being broken. You can make a bad decision without being a bad person. You can be behind without being doomed.
You can need help without being helpless. And you can be struggling without having lost all of your progress. With six, we have let small moments of peace count.
This one is important because if you're waiting for an entire peaceful life before you'll allow yourself to experience peace, you're going to miss the little pieces of it that are already available.
The first sip of coffee, a song that makes you feel something, a funny conversation, your favorite hoodie, a sunset, a clean bed, your dog doing something stupid, getting into the car and realizing your favorite song is playing, lapping you so hard that you can't breathe, the smell of shampoo, a really good sandwich. Please never underestimate the psychological power of a really good sandwich. Those moments matter. They don't have to fix your life.
They're not supposed to. They're just little reminders that the river isn't the only thing that exists. You can have a hard life and still have a beautiful life.
I think this is the part that took me the longest to understand. I thought life had to become easy before I could call it good. But those aren't the same thing.
A life can be hard and still be beautiful. You can have trauma and still laugh until your stomach hurts. You can have anxiety and still fall in love with things.
You can be behind and still be becoming. You can be exhausted and still have dreams. You can be scared and still build something.
You can be uncertain and still move forward. You can have a river running through your life and still sit on the bank and watch the sunset. The river doesn't cancel the sunset.
The chaos doesn't erase every good thing, and your pain doesn't disqualify you from joy.
Maybe the goal is never to stop the river. Maybe that's what The Silly Monk was trying to tell us. Maybe the goal was never, how do I create a life where nothing bad ever happens?
Maybe the goal is, how do I become someone who can meet life where it actually is? Because if you spend your entire life waiting for ideal circumstances, you can accidentally postpone your entire existence.
You'll say, when things calm down, I'll start. When I feel better, I'll go. When I'm confident, I'll try.
When I have enough money, I'll build it. When I'm healed, I'll love. When I'm less anxious, I'll live.
And suddenly, years have passed, and the river is still there. Not because you failed, but because rivers flow. Life moves.
Things change. People change. You change.
And there will probably always be something that requires you to adapt. So maybe peace isn't about standing on the riverbank, waiting for the world to become gentle enough. Maybe peace is learning, I can meet this.
Not all of it. Not forever. Not perfectly.
Just I can meet this moment. The river will not always look like this. And here's a beautiful thing.
Even though we're talking about accepting the river, that does not mean the river will always be this violent.
Rivers change, currents slow, water levels drop, paths appear, bridges get built, people come along, you become stronger, you learn things, you move, you leave places, you enter new ones, you heal, you grow, you find people who understand you, you develop skills you didn't have before, you become someone who can handle things that would have completely destroyed you years ago. And one day, you might look back at the river you thought would kill you and realize, holy shit, I crossed that.
Maybe not elegantly, maybe you swallowed half the river, maybe you cried, maybe you got a concussion from hitting a metaphorical rock, maybe you crawled, maybe something dragged you halfway, or someone, I guess.
Maybe you had to turn around and try a different route, but you crossed. And that's the part I don't want you to forget. You are not the same person who first looked at the river.
To the person who is standing on the bank right now, if you're listening to this episode because your life feels overwhelming as hell right now, if you're sitting there thinking, when do I get a break? I don't have a magical answer for you.
I can't promise that tomorrow will be easy. I can't promise that nothing else will go wrong. I can't promise you a completely chaos-free existence.
And honestly, I don't think anyone can. But I can tell you this. You don't have to wait for the river to disappear before you start living.
You don't have to have everything figured out. You don't have to be healed enough. You don't have to be confident enough.
You don't have to know exactly what you're doing. You just need to find the next place to put your foot. And if you can't find it alone, ask someone to help you find it.
If you can't cross today, rest. If the current is too strong, find another route. If the bridge doesn't exist, build one.
If the boat is broken, fix the boat. If you need someone to throw you a rope, ask for the damn rope.
But don't spend your entire life believing that you have to wait for the water to disappear, because maybe the piece you've been waiting for isn't on the other side of a perfectly calm life.
Maybe some of it is available right here, right in the middle of the chaos, right in the middle of the uncertainty, right in the middle of the messy, ridiculous, confusing, beautiful experiences of being alive.
And maybe that is what The Silly Monk was actually trying to teach us. Maybe he wasn't silly at all. Maybe he understood something that the Restless Man didn't.
Maybe the river wasn't the obstacle. Maybe the river was a lesson, because eventually you have to stop asking, when will this end, and start asking, how do I move through this? Not, why is my life so hard?
But what do I need right now? Not, why can I handle this? But what support would make this easier?
Not, why isn't my life going according to plan? But where can I go from here? And maybe eventually you stop looking at the river, like it's proof that your life is ruined.
Maybe you start looking at it and thinking, okay, this is what is in front of me. This is the current, this is where I am. So what's my next step?
Because you don't need to control the entire river. You don't need to know where every wave is going. You don't need to make the water stop.
You just need to learn how to keep moving. And sometimes that's what peace actually is. Not the absence of pandemonium, but knowing that even in the middle of it, you are still here and you're learning how to navigate.
One step, one breath, one decision, one stupid little rock at a time. And if you fall in, well, get the hell back out. We're still crossing.